PIVOT–PIVOT-PIVOT! – A Tale of Virtual Contests!

As this year’s Contest Coordinator, it seemed it would never start. . . and then came that blink of the eye moment!

The word pivot has been trending most of the season. What is a pivot? In the military, during a march, a pivot involves rising on the balls of both feet, turning 180 degrees to the right, and then stepping forward with left foot in the new direction. Working in Excel, you use a Pivot Table to extract the significant portions of a large detailed data set. Both meanings have been used this year.

Pivot 1.

No Fall Contest? The lack of camaraderie, challenge, and competition left us feeling empty. We reconciled ourselves to disappointment and stepped off, in true military style, to the new destination of a single spring contest season. We patiently waited.

Pivot 2.

District 25 has a wealth of resources for contests. Each area/division/district contest season has its own written script. Yet, the district had never held a combined Evaluation and International Speech contest. Previous scripts were combined and then personalized. Chris Raneri, Program Quality Director, and I tweaked, tweaked and then tweaked some more until we were both satisfied with the new contest script. We just needed to wait a tad longer before contest season began.

Pivot 3.

After two weekends of fulfilling that long-awaited need to be with each other, we got the news!

What? We can’t meet anymore!? No need to worry; our Trio had gathered prior to the official announcement and they knew exactly how this was going to unfold. Before I go any further, I must stop and share what an unbelievable and amazing vision they had for each phase of the now zoom-hosted contests. Within days, Chris had rewritten the contest script. He had extracted the significant actions required for a contest and made them virtual. Our Division Director, Jamie Pickering, had revised evaluation forms, ballots and timing sheets creating fillable fields that could be easily used by judges, assistants and the Chief Judge. D25 Chief Judge, Elizabeth Gray and I revised briefing scripts. Contestants embraced new presentation skills. What was the vision? It was a Monet! A Debussy! A Masterpiece of creativity and implementation.

Many thanks to Highway to Excellence for testing the new virtual scripts at their club contest. It provided the first of many improvements. And Chuck Mencke’s contributions of best practices–we can’t thank him enough.

I laughingly told the Trio I had agreed to serve as the Contest Coordinator and Outreach Chair because you write a script/ create a few documents/sit back and enjoy the contests. Not this year! Each contest script required multiple changes that led to a successful completion of a Pivot-Pivot-Pivot contest season. And yes, I’d do it again! It was worth it to see each smiling face receiving area, division and district trophies. Just look at those district happy faces!

District 25 International Speech contest began virtual briefing at 3:00PM May 16, and contest started promptly at 4:30PM.

Welcome to Our News Page!

Here's the latest news from District 25.
We post stories and photos about the doings of our members, clubs, and the district. There are also helpful articles to make you a better Toastmaster and your club more effective.

Each story has a label or category to help you find articles on specific subjects. Click on any category to view all posts related to that category.

You can also use the Archive drop down to view posts by date and quickly jump to a particular month.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT

Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.

Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.